


sorry to my unknown lover,

by angelica_barnes



Series: ABC [9]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Denial, For the most part, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hopeful Ending, I'm Sorry, Internalized Homophobia, Louis Tomlinson-centric, M/M, Please read notes, Self-Hatred, Unrequited Love, Zayn Leaves One Direction, a play on the fact that homosexuality was considered a mental illness, severe homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 19:03:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20013289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: louis loves girls.louis has always loved girls.louis isn't some sick psycho who thinks he loves boys.9. illness(please read notes)





	sorry to my unknown lover,

**Author's Note:**

> This contains severe homophobia and referring to LGBTQIA+ people as "sick" or "crazy". This is entirely fictional and does not represent any views based on real life knowledge of Louis Tomlinson or any other members of One Direction. I know nothing more about them than any other fan. I repeat, this is ENTIRELY FICTIONAL and holds NO ACTUAL TRUTHFUL INFORMATION regarding Louis' views on the LGBTQIA+ community.
> 
> That being said, I am ace bi myself and this was extremely hard to write due to the fact that I love love, but I thought it'd be an interesting concept to explore in a purely fictional world. None of the homophobic views expressed are my own, nor are they representative of the character I chose to spew them (Louis). If any of this triggers you, please don't read. I want you all to be safe and happy.
> 
> Again, this contains severe homophobia. None of the homophobic views are representative of myself or Louis Tomlinson. Please don't read if any of this bothers you. I hope you guys enjoy the story. Love you! :)

**to love ourselves**

**is the hardest kind of love**

**to find and to keep.**

**\- MM**

  
  


**poison**

they hang us in the streets

each night

no knowledge of the nooses

we already have

lowered into crowds from

our safe perches

behind window panes and fragile glass

close the blinds and peek out

at the devils

who dare to call us such

I wish to be a devil

like the rest

wielding chains of hate

rather than

wrestling against chains of love

they keep us from the light and good

the easy and the happy

we are the shadows that hide

beneath the beds but

with no ill intent

I wish to be forgiven

I wish to know the reason for

my lack of luck

I have tried to escape the poison’s clutches!

but what a sweet sweet poison

this is

I hold a person’s hand

in mine

like them

my only sin is that

I am a girl

too.

\- MM

  
  


**I’ve missed your calls for months it seems**

Louis grows up loving girls. Their curves and edges, their beauty and wits, their ability to see right through him without him having to say a word. It’s not hard to love them, to fall in love with how they love him.

His first kisses are shouted to his mother through the phone, his first relationships paraded around his schools. He finds comfort in the many eyes on him, comes to love the attention he gets whenever he holds a girl’s hand.

In his hometown, his beanies and scarves don’t make him gay. Neither do his vibrant colors and patterns, because it’s a well known fact that Louis loves girls, as lovers and friends, so people leave him alone.

He’s not expecting the onslaught of terrifying love and support and backlash that he receives after he envelopes the boy with the curls in a hug, because why should it matter? Why should it mean anything more than he lets on? Why should they care?

He’s not gay. He’s not sick. He’s not a fucking psycho.

**don’t realize how mean I can be**

Louis tries to keep quiet about how much he hates people calling him gay. Mainly because he’s grown close to the other boys in this band they’ve kickstarted, and Harry doesn’t seem bothered by the ‘Larry Stylinson’ rumors. Sometimes he even encourages them, for fun, and Louis tries to do the same, tries to understand, but he can’t.

Niall’s pretty open about loving love. Any kind of it, boys and girls and girls and girls and boys and boys and any other gender and any other gender. Louis wants to join in, wants to say he supports all love too and have it mean the same thing, but he doesn’t understand how two boys could love each other. It doesn’t compute.

Liam says he’s bi, is out and proud about it. Louis looks that up, ashamed to ask, and yet again hits a dead end for empathy - how could someone love girls  _ and _ boys? How does that work?

The only one as silent as Louis on the issue is Zayn, who Louis is pretty sure supports the other three only because Zayn sides with Liam on everything, no matter what. And Louis wants to ask, to have his suspicions confirmed or denied, but Zayn seems content on keeping everyone in the grey about everything.

Louis wants to help them. Wants to fix them, to make Harry stop acting like he loves him, to make Niall shut up about love, to make Liam only like girls, to make Zayn talk. He wants to help them, because he loves these boys like his brothers and he doesn’t want them to be sick.

**cause I can sometimes treat the people that I love like jewelry**

He keeps all this bottled up for five years, until 2015, when gay marriage is legalized in America and it’s all over the news. Rainbows and proposals and men kissing and women kissing and while Niall cheers and Liam cries and Harry dances, Louis leaves the room, overwhelmed.

Zayn follows him, finding Louis sitting against the wall of their shared hotel room with his head in his hands. Zayn sits down beside him, and doesn’t speak, comfortable in the tense silence surrounding them.

“God, I hate this,” Louis finally whispers, and waits for Zayn to ask what. But Zayn stays quiet, watching him with dark imploring eyes. Louis shakes his head, laughing loudly. Hysterically.

“They’re sick,” he says, wheezing through laughter. “They’re sick, they’re all sick, people whose heads aren’t screwed on quite right.”

He looks at Zayn, whose lips have parted, in shock or in protest Louis isn’t sure. Louis offers a crooked smile, one that he knows must look manic to Zayn.

“Don’t you want to help them, Zayn? Help them figure themselves out?”

Zayn’s eyes flicker left and right, to the ground and then up again as he breathes in deep.

“I think,” he starts, pausing as he thinks his next words over, “that they have figured themselves out, and that you should be happy for them.”

Louis stares. So it’s a protest then, another one of his brothers infected with this spreading sickness. He’s not sure why it’s taken this long for Zayn to say something, to voice his support of this epidemic, but it doesn’t change the fact that he has.

“They’re sick, Zayn,” he whispers. “I love them, and I want to help them. I want to help them get better.”

Zayn gives Louis a smile that reeks of pity, and Louis wants to punch him in his perfect teeth. He won’t, but still.

“They are better, Lou,” he says, voice soft. “They’re better because they have love, and they have people who accept them. And if you want them to be better than better, then you should accept them too.”

Louis shakes his head, looking away. Zayn doesn’t understand.

No one ever understands.

**cause I can change my mind each day**

Louis is surprised when Zayn doesn’t ditch him after that. Then again, Zayn runs away from conflict, hands over his ears and eyes squeezed shut. Louis isn’t sure if it’s the scene or what it means that bothers him.

Zayn lets Louis talk about sickness, lets him whisper his worries and concerns into the dark, and never outright calls him wrong though Louis knows that’s what he thinks.

“You think I’m wrong, don’t you?” Louis tries one night, wanting a fight, wanting an excuse to hit something, but Zayn doesn’t satisfy him with an answer, instead turning away and turning off the light.

After a few minutes in the dark, lying awake with only erratic breathing to listen to, Louis mutters, “Nevermind,” and thinks he hears Zayn’s breath catch in his throat.

**I didn’t mean to try you on**

There’s an interruption in his heartbeat whenever Harry comes into the room. Louis wonders what kind of health problem he has, but when he doesn’t die or even come close after three weeks of this he gives up on trying to find out.

He tells Zayn about it, worried about himself, and Zayn smiles softly, the expression muted and hinting at amusement, though at what, Louis couldn’t guess.

“It means you’re sick, Lou,” Zayn says, and Louis rolls his eyes, because there’s no illness online with this kind of description. No harm done, just hot cheeks and heartbeat irregularities and clammy hands.

“No I’m not,” he snorts in response. “I looked it up. No disease in existence has these symptoms, at least not the way I’ve got ‘em.”

Zayn’s smile dims, fading into a frown, and he shakes his head, turning over and away from Louis.

“It’s called a crush, Lou,” he murmurs, and Louis’ heart full on stops. “On a boy, too, so I guess you’re as sick as the rest of us.”

Louis doesn’t have the energy to tell him off, instead getting stuck between the lines.

“The rest of us?” He whispers. “You, too?”

Zayn is quiet, unmoving, but his answer echoes around the room when it comes.

“Me, too.”

**but I still know your birthday and your mother’s favorite song**

Louis ignores his sickness for Harry, denying it left and right, insisting to Zayn he’s healthy. He’s madly in love with Eleanor, he says again and again, to which Zayn always laughs, the sound soft and happy, because he doesn’t realize how serious Louis is about this.

Not that he can blame him. Zayn is oblivious to most of the things he doesn’t want to see, like how Liam’s eyes linger too long on him. Their late night talks are proof of this, because Zayn still seems to think that Louis will one day change his mind.

“I’m not kidding, Zee,” Louis tries one night in earnest, and Zayn stops giggling, wordlessly hanging him a cigarette. Louis takes a drag and waits for Zayn’s protests, his disagreements and counter arguments.

But “Okay, Lou,” is all he says, then lays his head on Louis’ shoulder and murmurs something Louis doesn’t catch.

**so I’m sorry to my unknown lover**

**sorry that I can’t believe**

**that anybody ever really starts to fall in love with me**

“What do they call themselves?” Louis asks one night, after hanging up on Eleanor halfway through a conversation, and Zayn tilts his head to the side in confusion. Louis smiles; Zayn looks like Liam, those two always somehow in perfect sync.

“Don’t know what you mean, Lou,” Zayn offers in response, and Louis struggles not to come up with the words but to force them out of his mouth, suddenly wondering if he really cares or wants to know.

“Like, Liam says he’s bi. What are you? And Harry, and Niall? What do you guys call the sickness?”

Zayn grows quiet, staring at the ground, and Louis almost wants to take back the word sickness, because Zayn bristles every time he says that. Withdraws in on himself, and Louis knows that it’s his refusal to call it anything else that bothers him.

“I say I’m pan,” Zayn finally murmurs. “It means that I can love anybody, so kind of like Liam. Harry is gay, I think, and Niall is ace and demiromantic. I’m not sure yet if he likes girls or boys or both.”

Louis nods slowly, biting back all the words he wants to say that Zayn calls destructive and demeaning.

“What do those mean?” He asks in a small voice, not wanting to wait to look them up, and Zayn smiles. It’s the first time Louis has seen happiness on his face during one of their talks, and if he’s not fooling himself, then there’s a bit of gratitude in there, and that causes something warm and heavy to settle in his stomach, something almost like pride.

“Ace is short for asexual,” Zayn starts gently. “It means that he doesn’t feel sexual attraction. Demiromantic means that he only falls in love with people once he knows them well.”

“Like, only with friends?” Louis asks, trying to push away all the questions he has about how the hell someone could not want sex. Zayn nods, slowly as if waiting for him to say something else.

Louis rolls over, fluffing his pillows before laying his head down, and says, “That’s weird.”

Zayn laughs softly, a click sounding as he turns out the light.

“Not really, no.”

Louis pretends he doesn’t hear.

**sorry to my unknown lover**

**sorry I could be so blind**

**didn’t mean to leave you and all of the things that we had behind**

On Liam’s birthday, they all get smashed and play stupid party games, staying up into ungodly hours of the morning. When they finally pass out, it’s on the floor with their limbs grazing each other’s, and Louis tries to breathe with Harry’s fingers brushing his.

Somewhere around noon he wakes up, and Harry’s curled around him in his sleep. Louis suddenly can’t get enough air into his lungs and shoves Harry off him, startling the younger boy awake.

With Harry’s shriek of surprise, the others open their eyes too, clutching their heads and muttering complaints about “bloody hangovers”, but all Louis can hear is the clanging in his ears and the blood rushing to his head.

He flees the room upon meeting Zayn’s curious eyes, and collapses against the door of the bathroom in their room, trying to catch his breath after running all the way there.

“I’m not sick, I’m not sick, I’m not sick,” he mumbles over and over again, hands over his ears as he rocks himself back and forth. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m  _ fine _ .”

He hears a soft click and looks up to see Zayn, watching him with sad eyes. He looks up with his own wild ones and chokes out, “I’m not sick, right?”

Zayn sits down beside him, gathering Louis in his arms, and if he could say any more Louis would say something about how sick that is too.

“I don’t know, Lou,” Zayn murmurs. “I don’t know.”

**I run away when things are good and never really understood**

Zayn hovers around Liam, Louis notices, and wants to ask whether there’s anything going on there. Whether they’ve started being sick together rather than alone, but Zayn won’t talk about it.

Meanwhile, Niall’s cheeks pinken whenever Harry sits near him, and Louis feels something ominously close to jealousy pooling in the pit of his stomach at the sight of it, hands itching to pull Niall away from the boy that Louis wrongly considers his.

“Niall is sick for Harry,” Louis says to Zayn that night, and Zayn’s eyes darken at the phrase. “Niall is sick for my -”

He stops, abruptly, realizing what he’d been about to say, and Zayn nudges him forward with a gentle question in a soft voice.

“Your what, Lou?”

There’s anger underlying those words, and Louis looks down, ashamed.

“My nothing, Zayn. I don’t care. I’m not sick.”

Zayn’s fists clench by his sides, but he doesn’t say anything else, and Louis wonders what he’s thinking.

**the way you laid your eyes on me in ways that no one ever could**

One night it comes to a peak, with Louis whispering about the sickness of what Zayn calls love into Zayn’s ear, and Zayn turns to presses his mouth over Louis’, turning him to stone.

“What was that for?” Louis rasps, voice going up octaves with every word, his shaking hands touching his lips. “What the bloody hell was that for, Zayn?”

Zayn shrugs and turns away, nestling under the covers, but not before Louis sees how shiny his eyes are.

“To make you shut up, I guess,” he says, “now go to sleep,” but Louis knows it’s more than that, suddenly, that he’s missed something big and important that he never should’ve missed.

**and so it seems I broke your heart**

Zayn is sick for him. It rings in his head like a windchime in a storm, and he’s on edge for every touch that Zayn chances. They’re a fucking mess, Louis realizes, because they’re all sick, sick with this contagious disease that’s spread like wildfire among them.

Zayn’s sick for him, and Liam’s sick for Zayn, and Niall’s sick for Harry.

And Louis is sick for Harry too, sick in the way that makes him want to crawl out of his own skin, to bury himself in covers and loneliness until the medicine of absence cures him.

**my ignorance has struck again**

Zayn doesn’t seem to want to talk to Louis anymore, avoiding him at all costs. This bugs Louis, gets under his skin, to the point that he actually considers pretending to accept the sickness just to get his friend back.

But he can’t, unable to let it go, the itchiness of wrongness becoming overwhelming anytime he comes close. It’s just a sickness, Louis tells himself, and people always get over sickness one way or another. Even if they die doing so, the sickness is at least gone with them, and so if what Zayn says is true and this isn’t something Louis can get rid of, there’s always the hope that it’ll die with him. A secret taken to his grave.

But he misses Zayn, misses his company and his silence, and it starts to grow unbearable when he sees Niall and Harry kissing lazily in their hotel room and it sparks something hot and ugly in his chest.

**I failed to see it from the start and tore you open til the end**

Zayn tells the others he’s leaving the day after their fourth album comes out, and no one really moves, unable to grasp what he’s telling them.

So they all just kind of sit there in awkward silence, until Liam suddenly stands and leaves, fists clenched and tears glistening in his eyes. Niall and Harry follow him in similar stances, their hands clasped between them, and Louis ignores it, pushing down the burning he feels somewhere towards his heart.

“Is this because you kissed me?” He asks, voice low, and Zayn looks at him tiredly.

“It’s because of a lot of things, Lou.”

Louis laughs. “No. No, it’s because you  _ kissed me _ , because you’re sick for me. You’re sick for me, Zayn, I can’t believe that after all this time -”

“I can’t believe that after all this time you still don’t get it, Louis!” Zayn suddenly shouts, standing abruptly with fists clenched by his sides. “If I’m as sick as you say I am, as you say we all are, then so are you! You’re sick for Harry, and you know it! You just choose to ignore it because god forbid you admit you’re different -”

“Shut up!” Louis says, voice shrill, his eyes darting around the room frantically as he looks for anything open, anything someone could’ve heard something through. “Shut up, no, I’m not sick -”

“Yes, Louis, you are,” Zayn snaps. “You’re sick because you hate love. You’re sick because you can’t accept difference. You’re sick because you won’t admit that all you really hate about us is that we love ourselves and you don’t.”

His eyes, furious and dark, suddenly close with exhaustion, and he sighs as he collapses back down onto the floor, dropping his head in his hands, dragging them down his face.

“That doesn’t make us sick, Louis. That makes us happy, open, amazing people that we’re proud to be, people that you should be proud of too.”

Zayn doesn’t look Louis in the eye as he stands up and pushes past him, heading for the door, and Louis feels his mouth open and close, searching for something to say that could change Zayn’s mind.

But the door closes before he can say a single word, and Louis knows he should be sorry for that, but instead he collapses back onto the bed, wondering if maybe it’s for the best.

**and I’m sorry to my unknown lover**

**sorry that I can’t believe**

**that anybody ever really starts to fall in love with me**

Nothing much changes after Zayn leaves. They all make an effort to keep it that way, to act as they always have, like their lives haven’t been irreversably changed.

“What if we left with him?” Niall suggests on one of their days off, Harry curled into his side, and Louis doesn’t say a word, waiting for someone else’s angry answer to break Niall’s heart, but it doesn’t come.

Liam doesn’t even glance at them as they all sit in their own swirling thoughts, and the silence is an answer in itself, Louis is sure.

**sorry to my unknown lover**

**sorry I could be so blind**

**didn’t mean to leave you and all of the things that we had behind**

There’s a letter waiting on Louis’ doorstep when he gets home after their hiatus begins, the image of Harry and Niall’s intertwined hands burned into his mind like an unwanted invitation. Louis sighs as he sets his bags down, ripping the letter open without checking to see who it’s from.

_ A dictionary of incurable disease _ , it says inside, the title of a long list of words and their definitions. Some pop out at Louis, ones he knows, in Zayn’s artsy scrawl.

_ Gay: to love exclusively the same gender. _

_ Bi: to love either gender. _

_ Ace: to not experience sexual attraction. _

_ Demiromantic: to fall in love only with friends. _

Louis feels tears gather in his eyes as he sees the colorful hearts drawn next to each word, different combinations for each term. It says at the bottom that they’re the colors on the flags, because there’s a flag for every sexuality, even the ones Louis has never heard of before.

He reads the entire list on the floor of his kitchen, poring over every word more than once, hand over his mouth and tears slipping down his cheeks.

_ I hope you find a word you like for your sickness,  _ is the last thing at the bottom of the list, which Louis reads over five times.  _ I hope you’re happy. _

  
  


**and someone will love you**

**someone will love you**

**someone will love you**

**but someone isn’t me.**

  
  


**this is my charge to everyone:**

**we have to be better.**

**we have to love more, hate less.**

**we got to listen more and talk less.**

**it’s our responsibility to make the world a better place.**

**\- Megan Rapinoe**

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! the title and lyrics are both taken from Halsey's "Sorry" which is an incredible song as she is an incredible artist. I was just listening to it the other day and decided it was the Zouis theme song (in my opinion) despite me being a hardcore Larry & Ziam (also Zianourry) shipper. Thank you all so much for reading! Hope you have a wonderful day (and life!)!


End file.
